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Feb. 11th, 2006 12:57 pmIn Transamerica, and in the first season of Queer as Folk which i am watching now with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cowgrrl, there are story arcs dealing with stealth. (This is not an uncommon media theme, actually; while formulating this entry i also remembered a plotline about stealth in the movie Keeping the Faith, although there it dealt with someone Jewish who was dating a Gentile.)
Stealth means not letting people on about your life, when you can pull it off. If you live in a society where people will ostracize you, ridicule you, fire you, evict you, beat you, rape you, kill you, for being gay or transgendered, it is obvious why many people choose stealth. Yet many queer activists will criticize queer people who choose stealth, as if each person trying to live their lives and just be left alone is an activist and a 'representative' of our community. In the movie and TV show mentioned above, stealth is portrayed as a source of drama in which 'innocent' people get hurt, thus demonstrating how stealth is deception and we should all therefore just be trusting of people around us.
Stealth is a reasonable survival strategy, but it is one that people will criticize you for, and call you wrong, deceptive, unethical, immoral.
Along similar lines, the Happy Feminist wrote about the way women are criticized for being cold and rude to men who try to pick them up (thanks tolady_babalon for the link). As many woman can tell you (including me), trying to rebuff advances in a nice or polite way usually doesn't work. Oh, there are exceptions, yes; but eventually you learn that the most effective way to be left alone in peace is to be heartless.
Yet this goes against the cultural standard that says we should always be nice and friendly to people.
People who are oppressed have to deal with these kinds of catch-22s all the time... they rarely loom large in someone's life, but there are a hundred little scenarios like this in which there is no way to win. Like the constant flow of water, these things wear you down slowly.
cowgrrl, there are story arcs dealing with stealth. (This is not an uncommon media theme, actually; while formulating this entry i also remembered a plotline about stealth in the movie Keeping the Faith, although there it dealt with someone Jewish who was dating a Gentile.)Stealth means not letting people on about your life, when you can pull it off. If you live in a society where people will ostracize you, ridicule you, fire you, evict you, beat you, rape you, kill you, for being gay or transgendered, it is obvious why many people choose stealth. Yet many queer activists will criticize queer people who choose stealth, as if each person trying to live their lives and just be left alone is an activist and a 'representative' of our community. In the movie and TV show mentioned above, stealth is portrayed as a source of drama in which 'innocent' people get hurt, thus demonstrating how stealth is deception and we should all therefore just be trusting of people around us.
Stealth is a reasonable survival strategy, but it is one that people will criticize you for, and call you wrong, deceptive, unethical, immoral.
Along similar lines, the Happy Feminist wrote about the way women are criticized for being cold and rude to men who try to pick them up (thanks to
lady_babalon for the link). As many woman can tell you (including me), trying to rebuff advances in a nice or polite way usually doesn't work. Oh, there are exceptions, yes; but eventually you learn that the most effective way to be left alone in peace is to be heartless.Yet this goes against the cultural standard that says we should always be nice and friendly to people.
People who are oppressed have to deal with these kinds of catch-22s all the time... they rarely loom large in someone's life, but there are a hundred little scenarios like this in which there is no way to win. Like the constant flow of water, these things wear you down slowly.
